May December

Watching Me Watching You

or

Persona Non Grata

 

It's a little bit of an invasion, really. The actress (Natalie Portman) "doing personal research" on your life. Seems there's going to be an "independent" film about the notorious past of you, Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore), and the notorious affair with a 13 year old friend of her son's, got pregnant, was tried very publicly for child-rape, was convicted and sent to prison where she delivered their child, and, when released, married her now "of age" lover, Joe (Charles Melton). They've tried to live a normal life, but it's practically impossible, with the tabloids, the photographers, the neighbors. And with those who'd rather not forget. 

 

Now, 20 years later, "this film" is being made (an earlier, exploitative TV Movie was made years ago without their participation or consent), and the Atherton-Yoo family is co-operating with this one in the desperate hope that it might make the film more sympathetic...or at least do no harm.

 

Do no further harm.

So, the family has welcomed this woman, this actress Elizabeth Berry (Portman) to their home, and at a busy time: "the twins" (Gabriel Chung, Elizabeth Yu) are graduating high school, and that will leave Gracie and Joe, for the first time, empty-nesters. Their first daughter—you know, that one—(Piper Curda) is coming home from school for the first time since she left for school. For family. Special occasion. And...she's there. The actress.

But, the actress is just clueless enough that when she arrives at their doorstep for a meet-and-greet dinner that she (helpfully, of course) brings in a package she found left at the door-step of the house. That package is just another poop-a-gram from a harassing neighbor (or maybe it's not even a neighbor—they get them every week). She'll learn. It's her job to. Still, it's not a good start.

And Elizabeth is good at first. She hangs back, observing, talks to the sympathetic friends, makes notes, preliminary research. She witnesses son Charlie at dinner get a little belligerent and leave the table. Things are kind of tense. Elizabeth is sensitive to this and worries about her presence and reassures them that she is doing the research because she wants to portray them honestly and make it a "human story" (what else would it be?). She asks Gracie how they met, and when dinner's over, gets Joe's side of it and asks if she can visit him at his work. Then she starts to do some digging.

She interviews Gracie's ex-husband, the one she cheated on. She goes to the pet shop where Joe and Gracie were working and talks to the manager there, asking if she can go into the back-room where the two were caught, and when the manager goes back out front to check on a customer, Elizabeth tries to re-enact the scene where it happened. She goes to the lawyer who represented Gracie, and meets, by accident, the son who was friends with Joe (but is no longer) and he has issues.

But, he's not the only one, apparently. Elizabeth goes to visit Joe at work and she's deliberately provocative, almost like she's re-enacting what might have led up to the affair at the pet shop. She speaks at daughter Mary's drama club and (of course) the first question from the students is about filming sex scenes and Elizabeth's answer makes Mary more than uncomfortable. Then, she asks Gracie to show her how she does her make-up.

It's one of two sequences that director Todd Haynes sets up in front of a bathroom mirror. But, there's no mirror. Elizabeth and Gracie stand side-by-side playing as if a mirror was before them, but they're facing forward on screen, with us sitting in the place of the mirror. It's as if one isn't necessary because at this point, the two women are becoming reflections of each other. 

We've already seen Elizabeth going through old tabloids, studying pictures of Gracie and imitating her poses, the way she folds her hands, the way she holds her mouth. Gracie acts differently around Elizabeth and is more capable of holding things together because that's the image she wants to give Elizabeth—it's how she wants to be portrayed. But, it's a tough act to pull off. In private with Joe, she is more flinty and breaks down often. But, with Elizabeth, she's thoughtful, calm, and nurturing.

And, at the same time Elizabeth is learning to "play" Gracie, she is "playing" Gracie, complimenting her, ingratiating, trying to get on her good side (even while not knowing that that is precisely the side Gracie is giving her). The two women start to meld into each other's psyches, becoming a third person, the "best" Gracie each can achieve. Both are acting "towards" that version, it's "the job," one for the family, one for the film.

There's an amusing story in the "Trivia" section of imdb's listing for May December that "Julianne Moore (Gracie) did not notice Natalie Portman (Elizabeth) was improvising by mimicking her mannerisms in some scenes until later into filming." That's amusing if it's true, but Portman is doing it so subtly—even while her character is doing it more blatantly in the film—that Moore probably caught on when she was looking. Portman usually saves the mimicry for when Moore is out of eye-line and it's slightly spooky. But, then Portman's actress is "spooky," doing things for verisimilitude that most actors (I hope) wouldn't do.

It's one of Haynes' most subtle films about the act of watching and being watched and how scrutiny changes things and not in an altogether good way. Layers and layers of scrutiny abound until the whole thing feels like it's under a microscope, at a time when we are all voyeurs, while simultaneously wanting our 15 minutes of fame...until we get it.

Eagle Eye

Written at the time of the film's release...

"Where's LaBeouf?"

Jerry Shaw (Shia LaBeouf) has just had $71,500 dropped into his bank account. Giddily, he snatches up the money, runs home, and pays two months rent in advance. The landlady mentions something about all the boxes. Jerry spins inside, turns on the light, and finds he's walked into a nightmare--crates of sensitive materials and bomb-making equipment, pistols, rifles, night-vison goggles, F-16 training manuals...oh, and several tons of ammonium nitrate—enough to level another Oklahoma municipal building.

The moment is so well-staged that it evokes an audience-wide "Woh!"

His cell phone rings. A female voice says, "The FBI will be at your apartment in thirty seconds. Get out now!" He hasn't learned to move fast enough yet.

Dedicated mom Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan) has just shipped her son on a band-trip to Washington D.C. and is relaxing for some girl-talk and a boiler-maker when she gets a phone call. A female voice tells her to go outside and look at the window of the McDonald's across the street. On the promo monitor, she sees a "live" shot of her son en route, and the voice tells her to go to a specific parked car—right now—or her son will be killed. She goes.

Remember the story about the pizza-delivery guy who robbed a bank, got caught, and told the police that he was forced to do it or a necklace he was wearing would explode?* And while waiting for the bomb squad, the device went off, killing him? Evidently, so did the screen-writers for much of Eagle Eye recalls that bizarre scenario of an innocent forced to commit acts against their will. But that organization attached to that phone-voice must be near-messianic in scope because it can monitor your progress by hacking into security-cams, and eases their near-escapes with constant directions and remote access to reader-boards, cell-networks, automated machinery, traffic lights, military equipment, cranes, high-tension towers, anything electronic or capable of broadcasting, right down to the X-ray machines at the airport check-points. Needless to say, there's a scene at Circuit City where this anonymous group goes to town.

It's a movie that, more than any theater announcement, compels you to turn off your cell-phone in the theater.

Who or what organization is doing this and why? Throughout the movie, I was harboring the suspicion that whatever the reasoning behind the elaborate, sometimes crazy, plot, it would not live up to the preposterous hook of the film. But it almost does, using as its center a security risk that this nation has practically inscribed in its Constitution—a blunder as big as lining up all your planes at Pearl Harbor. It's a scenario that's been used before in spy/suspense fiction, and Eagle Eye owes a lot to those writers, as well as the scribes for such diverse films as I, Robot, The Manchurian Candidate, Colossus: The Forbin Project, The Man Who Knew Too Much, 2001: a Space Odyssey, North By Northwest, Telefon, The Lady from Shanghai, and The Conversation. That's quite a diverse roster of films, paranoia being their common thread.

Director D.J. Caruso helmed a previous Shia LaBeouf box-office winner, Disturbia, and manages to make wide-open landscapes as restrictive as the limited point-of-view of that earlier film. Sometimes too restrictive. Two highway smash-ups are shot so close that one gets no sense of the relationship of mayhem to mayhem--they could be happening in separate states for all we see. However, the strategy benefits a sequence utilizing an airport's baggage conveyor system—making it as dizzying as a turn through a carnival fun-house.

LaBeouf has a bit more energy than he displayed in the "Indiana Jones" film, and Michelle Monaghan (of Gone Baby Gone) shows she's just as capable doing action work as well. Billy Bob Thornton is wonderfully dry as an FBI agent, Rosario Dawson gets to be taken seriously as an Air Force investigator, and Michael Chiklis makes a fine Secretary of Defense.

It isn't art, but it's a good ride--a pop-corn movie with just as much shelf-life and nutrition-value, while being a nice little tumble through the history of techno-thrillers of the past thirty years.

 

* 2023 Aside: Matt Reeves used the same bit in The Batman.

Benny and Joon

So...I guess there's some trial going on?

Since so many people on the inter-webs are trying to make bank on it by "regurginging" it, I thought I'd do the same thing...but in a nice way. I'm transferring a couple of Johnny Depp movies from my old site to this site (where they'll seem like new content). I have no axe to grind. The reviews are rather complimentary to Mr. Depp, even if they do contrast his light and dark sides. I'd have done the same for Amber Heard, but...I don't have any old reviews of her stuff. Lest I be accused of bias or anything (although I don't think any uber-fans can sign a petition to kick me off my own blog...I think).

 

Benny and Joon (Jeremiah S. Chechik, 1993) When examining the career of Johnny Depp, one looks to the blockbusters: the Pirates movies, the many Tim Burton collaborations. But then there are the films that fall through the cracks—not unlike the characters in this film. For anyone doubting Depp's ability to not depend on his looks and create a compelling character, Benny and Joon is a revelation.

 

Filmed in Spokane, Washinton, it tells the story of of an auto mechanic, the 1/3 eponymous Benny (Aidan Quinn) taking care of his 1/3 eponymous but schizophrenic sister, Juniper (Mary Stuart Masterson). He's torn between his commitment to Joon and his desire to live a life, free of her responsibility. But, his sense of duty and brotherly protectiveness trap him into doing nothing else, even though he might be inadequate at the care-taking task.

By luck of the draw, Sam (Depp) drops into their lives...literally; Joon wins him in a poker game. That plot development prat-falls Benny and Joon directly into "twee-ville," but Sam's addition to the cast arrives just in time to avoid it. Sam is a movie-freak, who knows every movie—the weirder the better—and models himself as the love-child of Buster Keaton and The Little Tramp. Eccentric, scruffy, but in a non-threatening way, Depp's head-tilting performance is just the right fizz to put in this Shirley Temple of a movie. You wonder what he's going to do next, and Depp is given enough ground to deliver a number of mute routines that are laugh-out-loud charming.

But, there are more joys to be had with guest-turns by Julianne Moore, William H. Macy, CCH Pounder, Oliver Platt, and Dan Hedaya—the kind of movie where your attention is slapped every few minutes with a "They're in this?" It might get a little heavy for kids in the third act—"everybody's MAD at each other!"—but there's a satisfying resolve. And if you have a sister or daughter not in love with Johnny Depp yet, this one will do it.

Benny and Joon is a Chick-Flick that guys can enjoy.

 

2022 Update: I still think Benny and Joon is an enjoyable film—it's enough to make you want to forget his film of The Avengers (almost—he's been doing a LOT of TV since then). I still have the creepy feeling that it's a dumbed-down, sugar-sprinkled look at mental illness, The Child's Guide to Schizophrenia. That's something that will help NO ONE. It does have a couple of good lessons about being a caretaker, though—don't be so regimented and go with the flow because it's easier on the caretaker and caretakee. It's a marathon, a long game, and minor things are spilled milk in the long run. That's something that needs to be said. And Benny and Joon says it very specifically, especially if you think the movie is less about Mary Stuart Masterson (please come back, we miss you) and more about Aidan Quinn.

Chloe

Written at the time of the film's release...

"We Used to Do Everything Together"

 
Atom Egoyan's Chloe (based on the movie Nathalie...) is a throwback to the '70's, and that cusp of movie-making history before cable began making the sexually-charged obsession films that used to draw folks into the cinemas. Take a theme of Hitchcockian prurience (including a bit of his fashion sense), slime it with some DePalma directness (without the use of power-tools) and spice it with just a pinch of Kubrickian cruelty and that's Chloe.

Dr. Catherine Stewart (Julianne Moore) has a successful practice as a clinical OB/GYN—very clinical. "It's just the contraction of muscles," she informs a patient who's never had an orgasm. "There's nothing mysterious or magical about it."

In any Hitchcock thriller, such expert dismissal clamors for a cum-uppance. 

Fact is, she's worried about her marriage to classical music scholar David (Liam Neeson). There's not a lot of communication in it. For instance, she throws a surprise party for him, which he misses completely, when he fails to catch a shuttle from New York. Smartie, smartie has a party... She's hurt, embarrassed, vulnerable, and suspicious. David's evasiveness and a happened-upon text message lads her to suspect he's having an affair, despite his protestations (well, she can see him flirting with anything in a skirt!). The couple may be talking, but nobody's listening. 

A chance encounter with student-aged escort Chloe Sweeney (Amanda Seyfried, all eyes and lips) gives her an idea; she hires the young hooker to flirt with David—just to see what happens (just to confirm what she suspects in her mind). "What's the client's name?" asks the girl. "He's not the client," the doctor orders. 

Of course not. That would imply somebody else has control. The situation is about her, willing to tempt fate to tempt her husband, and make concrete her suspicions. An arranged casual meeting at lunch confirms her fears—David is interested in the girl. Very interested. 

This creates a series of triangulations that are liable to hurt somebody with its knife-like edges. The issues become the usual ones in sexual politics: who's in control, what's the motivation, what's the risk, who has the headache. 

This would be a great deal of fun if it was more...fun. For all the frank-talk and the abundant nudity on the part of Seyfried and Moore, little is left to the imagination. And imagination is what the film is all about...or should be. In her voice-over, young Chloe boasts that she is skilled enough to become "your living, breathing...unflinching dream." It's an example of how the screenplay is clever with its words and quite precise in its usage. But it has no wit. It takes everything so seriously to the point of ludicrousness, and can't even laugh at its own contrary prudishness. It's like a partner more concerned in acting the part in their performance than with the act itself. It's not fun. Kinky for awhile, but not fun. 

Some of Hitchcock's naughty sense of humor would be nice, even some of his comic mother issues, as opposed to the earnestly oppressive ones here, would have been fine. Hell, I wouldn't have minded a power-tool or two—just something a little over the top, or off of it. Something that might make it a shade more ironic, iconic or comic. It shouldn't be such a conscientiously cautionary tale. What fun is that? 

Ultimately, Chloe is simply cloying. As disappointing and tasking as a bad date. 

Carrie On, My Wayward Daughter

King's Prom Queen

Carrie (Brian DePalma, 1976) Director Brian DePalma ratcheted up to the top tier of film directors—from his independent-gadfly status—with his adaptation of Stephen King's teen horror story. It was the first film based on one of King's novels, "Carrie" being only King's second published book. Screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen did away with King's splintered narrative and made it more personal, treating it like some perverse After-school Special from Hell, showing the tortured existence of a repressed high school wall-flower—played at the time by 26 year-old Sissy Spacek—who, upon her late onset of puberty is given yet another curse—telekinesis, the ability to move objects with her mind...sometimes violently.

Sometimes very violently.

Some might consider it a gift as, after all, it levels the playing-field for this unpopular, shy girl when dealing with the teasing and bullying of her school-mates, a species of popularity that Carrie does not understand or even hope to attain.

The trouble is Carrie White (Spacek) is not mature enough to use it with any sort of tempered judgment. The very hormones coursing through her that have given her the power are also the ones that give her extremes of emotions that are only exacerbated by the social freedom and pressures that percolate and bubble and boil in the cauldron that is High School.

Carrie White, also, has a less-than-secure home-life. Her mother (played by Piper Laurie) is extremely religious to a near-demented degree. A single mother, her control over Carrie is close to a strangle-hold, and as tight a grip as she maintains, she cannot compete with her daughter's desire to fit in and her defiance, which completely unhinges her. Combine that with Carrie's newly-realized powers and her Mother begins to see her as a devil or witch. Certainly Godless.

Carrie's persecution by the more popular girls at Bates High School inspires Sue Snell (Amy Irving) to suggest to her boyfriend Tommy Ross (William Katt) that he take Carrie to the upcoming prom. He is VERY reluctant, but she manages to convince him On the other hand, if Sue has sympathy for Carrie, "Sosh" Chris Hargenson (Nancy Allen) has vengeful antipathy, for the way she's been punished over her bullying of Carrie. And rather than admit her role in it, doubles down on taking revenge on Carrie by sabotaging Sue's good intentions. Her actions, though, only guarantee that everything is going to go to hell, complete with the commensurate fire and brimstone, wiping out guilty and innocent alike.

De Palma had the advantage of some lucky casting—he conducted a joint casting call with George Lucas, who was looking for young actors for his upcoming "Star Wars" feature—and he also had the lucky break of getting Spacek (whom he knew as a set dresser for husband Jack Fisk, a production designer), as well as managing to coax Piper Laurie out of a self-imposed retirement (after winning an Oscar for The Hustler), as well as getting teen-heart-throb and cast-member of "Welcome Back Kotter", John Travolta. It's an amazing cast with large parts for Betty Buckley (who would win a "Tony" Award for "Cats") as well as newcomers Irving and Allen (both of whom would appear in other De Palma films).

By the time of filming, the iconoclastic De Palma had developed a huge respect for the cinema of Alfred Hitchcock (his previous films, Sisters and Obsession, being whole-sale tributes to the Master of Suspense) and his work on Carrie has echoes of Hitchcock's architectural film-work throughout, even borrowing Bernard Herrmann's murder music from Psycho for a sound-accompaniment to Carrie's use of her powers (Herrmann was even set to score Carrie before his death). Certainly, frustratingly domineering mothers and religious iconography were appropriated from Hitch's work, as well as his way of building suspense.

Carrie remains one of the strongest films in De Palma's filmography, with its combination of the macabre, the tragic, and the mordantly humorous, lying just on the precipice of hysteria, which is where one's memories of High School usually lie.

De Palma moves from slo-motion suspense to split-screen mayhem at Carrie's prom.

Written at the time of the film's release...

To Carrie Out the Lord's Vengeance
or 
"Mama, Don't Ruin it!"

I've been working on a review of Brian De Palma's film Passion the last couple of weeks years (still working out how I feel about it—on a superficial enjoyment level it doesn't succeed very well, but if you appreciate craft and detail there is a lot to digest, and it makes you realize that a lot of older directors go through that shift where the details are more important than the Big Picture) and was watching an interview with De Palma* about the film (which I'll include again when I get around to finishing it) and at one point the subject of Kimberly Pierce making a new version of Carrie was broached.  

"We're friends", he said of Pierce, who made Boys Don't Cry and Stop-Loss. "I've seen some stuff and it looks good." But the more telling comment from the talk is when someone brings up Piper Laurie (who played mother Margaret White in his version) and De Palma remarks: "Piper thought we were making a comedy."

As well she might have. Stephen King's "Carrie" is a hoot to read (you can do so—textually—here), but it isn't if you take it too seriously. Which is odd. King cackles and galumphs through his writing, something he also did when he took to acting and directing his films. Which is why the best King adaptations have a surreal sense of giddy humor about them—they have to be a little over-the-edge, dangling their feet in the muddy waters of madness to be really, really good. It's why George Romero made good King adaptations. And Kubrick (despite King's protestations). And Carpenter. And Reiner. And De Palma.  But, if you get all solemn and reverential about them, they fall flat as pancakes.

Pierce gets precipitously close to that edge, but doesn't tumble over it. She includes a couple of things that De Palma, and the screenwriter of both versions—and the musical version—Lawrence D. Cohen, left out of King's book, which are the opening scene of Carrie's birth (the harrowing circumstances alluded to in the first chapter) and a sub-plot involving Sue Snell. Quite a few things are better—the kids...look like kids, not twenty-somethings from television sit-com's posing as teens. The good of that is that the performances are more awkward and more vulnerable. The downside is that they are all dewy lumps that don't have a lot of distinctiveness to them, so one is caught for a second wondering "which one is this, again?" I mock the ages of the older Carrie cast-members, but they had the experience and chops (from those sit-coms, presumably) to make their characters known as soon as they entered a shot. The 2013 kids are...awkward...looking like they're ready for a direction-cue in the middle of a take. For example, as pretty and competent as Gabriella Wilde is (she plays this version's Sue Snell, the "remorseful" girl played first by Amy Irving), most of the time she's blandly waiting for her next line with a concerned furrow and not much else behind it

One essential thing (given the times, making this Carrie somewhat relevant) is the inclusion of the evil genie of new media into the mix. Every kid here has a cell-phone. Every kid is documenting their lives like would-be film-makers (and Pierce throws in random samples of such stuff for bridging sequences, showing "normal" high school activity). But, the most innovative use of it comes when Carrie has a "period" in school that isn't scheduled and the girls in her high school gym class viciously taunt her, there's the added inevitability that some goonish lout will whip out their I-phone (usually banned from bathrooms for this very reason) to record the event. At that point, the truly bad-bad girl of Kris Hargenson (a brunetted Portia Doubleday here, future Mrs. de Palma Nancy Allen then) decides to go one step further, post it on YouTube, and it's then that punishment is meted out to the class. For Kris, this is unfair—she doesn't want to be an out-cast as she sees Carrie is and lashes out, digging herself deeper and deeper into detention, punishment and malicious revenge—and that video is used to twist the knife during the horrific prom sequence. It raises the stink of public media being thrown into the mix of private bullying and how it has escalated the trauma of humiliation by bringing mob mentality into the pecking order, empowering the mean-spirited far beyond their reach, and narrowing the victim of options for safe zones that might bring light (and perspective) to their situation. At that point, humiliation becomes torture and isolation becomes impenetrable.

As I said, if you take this stuff too seriously, it becomes no fun at all. And while Pierce's heart is in the right place, standing up for the repressed outcast and removing the puerile nudity of De Palma's version, she also goes a bit too far, making things less horror-ific, and more disturbingly real. For example, taking the loony ecstasy that Laurie brought to her fundamentalist (no fun; all mental) mother—Julianne Moore's version is seriously deranged, scratching herself to bleeding at the slightest provocation—and making Moretz's Carrie a very active revenge-seeker (where Spacek's interpretation was all evil-eye and mannequin-stiff, Moretz directs the carnage like a magician), the changes make her much less sympathetic as a character. Even though both movies show Carrie "learning her craft" by checking out resources in the library (I thought schools were banning books right and left—heck, they even ban "Carrie!"), the new Carrie seems to have more control than Spacek's, whose bursts of revenge felt like an id monster that would combust things with a look. This one concocts tortures and lingers over them like a cat playing with a mouse. Hey, control is great, but at what point does the tortured become the torturer? At what point do we lose sympathy for her and see her as just another maniac terrorizing a school? At what point does that earnestness work against the intent?

So. Good attempt. Maybe even worth the effort. But, at some point, this new Carrie manages to undermine the reason it was generated in the first place—to give us a really good scare. Perhaps real life events have just caught up and overwhelmed the perspective of seeing entertainment in this, or, to make debating points, the filmmakers just eked out some of that entertainment value. But, I remember leaving the first Carrie feeling sympathy for the devil, seeing it as a tragedy. This time, it seemed everything was a natural consequence of tinkering with forces beyond one's control, especially if self-control is in short supply. There was no catharsis, and at that point, Carrie 2.0 just stands for nothing, a nihilistic bloody mess. 

*